


why'd you come, you knew you should have stayed.

by vesselera



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Flashbacks, Graphic Description, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-20 02:42:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7387318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vesselera/pseuds/vesselera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fake friends stab you in the back, true friends stab you in the front, but best friends stab you in both and then burn you to hide the evidence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you don't know the half of the abuse.

**Author's Note:**

> despite the tags, the story isn't too bad. read at your own risk, though. i will be updating this pretty regularly.

The police were smart. He thought he had done the clean-up job well. Gloves were used, all the blood was properly rinsed off (the things you can learn from people who get their periods), and the corpse was burned to nothing in a secluded area. Sure, the actual event was completely on the fly, but he really put thought into the clean-up.

But somehow, Tyler was caught.

Apparently, his case was big enough to be covered worldwide. BBC, CNN, the New York Times – every big news outlet picked up the headline: “Ohio Man Kills Friend During Panic Attack.” It seemed a lot more surreal as Anderson Cooper said it as a picture of your mugshot appeared on the screen. “A gruesome murder” was used to describe it often. What pussies. He had seen worse on Investigation Discovery.

Now here he was, being moved by two guards through the cell block. Arms were hanging over the bars, and cold faces were staring at him as he passed. Heathens. He approached his cell, his new home for the rest of his life (or twenty years depending on the parole deal), and undid his handcuffs. “Welcome home.” one of them snarled. “You’re going to be in here 23 hours a day, get used to it.” Before long, he was locked in.

There wasn’t much in there, but he didn’t really expect anything other than a concrete bed, a mirror, and the blank walls surrounding three sides. The bars keeping him from the outside world was menacing. Sitting on the cold block of a bed, he stared at the wall. That’s what a lot of his time would be spent doing, right? Staring. Though, that wasn’t much different than what he used to do.

He would spend a lot of his time in room, just staring at the ceiling. If he did anything else, he would most certainly have gone mad. With a mix of Van Halen, The Killers, and Childish Gambino playing, he would imagine the dents in the wall swirling to create figures. There was a lifeboat on the left, a tiger near the right corner, and a jack hammer directly above him. That always made a lot of noise when he closed his eyes. A lot of noise happened when he closed his eyes.

“It’s sensory processing disorder,” he recalled the third doctor he visited as a child telling his mother, “usually it gets misdiagnosed as ADHD, but Tyler doesn’t seem to exhibit that. He’s a focused kid, in fact.”

Sounds and lights were amplified for him. Any sudden noise would send him into a frenzy. The fluorescent lights of a hospital made him fidgety. The dimness of the jail was comforting to him. Now if only the other damn inmates would stop yelling.

He kept his eyes locked on the wall in front of him for a bit, letting the gray hypnotize him. But then, his gaze was broken by a voice.

A familiar voice.

“Hey.” It echoed through the cell, and out of the corner of his eye, Tyler saw a figure sitting next to him on the bed.

He turned quickly to catch the figure next to him, and he was greeted by a face that held all of secrets, all of his guilt, all of his pleasure: the face of Josh, his best friend. 

The holes were still in his stomach, he still had a gash in his forehead, but by god, he still looked as good as ever.

The cell seemed to glow with an angelic yellow light that hurt his eyes a bit too much. His senses were heightened, but at this point he wasn’t bothered.

“I- hi.” he replied.

Was he mad? Had the five or so minutes he had been in the cell finally gotten to him? This couldn’t be right.

“What’s new with you?” the disheveled male next to him asked.

“Well, I mean…” he trailed off, giving a motion to the orange jumpsuit on his frame and the bars confining him inside the small room.

A dastardly, almost taunting laugh left Josh’s lips as Tyler looked down at his feet in shame. “You put yourself here, you know.” Josh said in a condescending voice.

Silence.

“I know. Hey, I didn’t mean to-...”

He’s cut off by a hand moving to his knee. It felt so real.

“Don’t even start. I’m one of the only people who knows what it’s like to have air coming to your lungs through your stomach. You sure know how to use a knife.”

Another taunting laugh rang through the room until Josh suddenly became serious.

“I forgive you.” Cue a hand moving to Tyler’s jaw as he moved his head to face him. The last time he thought he would ever see that face again was when he was putting a flame to his wrist. He never thought he would see those eyes open again.

This was the reason all of this happened. His hand on his face, his intense stare, the way he was so kind to him, even when Tyler was putting a knife through him: this caused him to be in jail. Josh caused him to be in jail.

So, he turned away, and a sigh left his lips as he simply muttered, “I can’t. Not now.”

“Fine.” Josh said. He looked over to reply, but the figure, along with the yellow glow, had vanished, and he was left in the darkness to ponder this actions again.


	2. just because we check the guns at the door...

Josh rarely came around, however each time he did, Tyler always questioned himself.

Was this real? Was this fake? He felt _so_ real. He could feel his presence there each time the figure appeared in the cell, and the yellow glow would always follow him around. That damn yellow glow. It always hurt his eyes and made his ears ring. He always wanted to look away to spare himself from such pain, but somehow he was quite drawn to the light.

He was never drawn to light.

One time, Josh walked up to him as he was eating lunch. Seeing as he could potentially be “in harm’s way” when put with the general population, Tyler only had lunch in a special room set aside for those in solitary confinement. The door was always locked shut behind him as he went in, and a guard usually stood in view of the door to make sure he didn’t get out. But, on that particular day, the door opened and Josh swung the door open with no regard to authority. He was whistling that one tune he always seemed to remember (wasn’t it “Archie Marry Me” by Alvvays?). Pulling over the chair, Josh, who was still dripping with blood from the fresh wounds that had been inflicted on him six months earlier, sat down next to Tyler.

“What’re you eating?”

“Nothing exciting.” Tyler replied, motioning to the ham and cheese sandwich and barely ripe apple on his tray. He had gotten used to eating boring food; after all, there wasn’t much else he could ask for except for the rare occasion they got a TV Dinner-esque meal. Besides that, a sandwich, fruit, and some milk were all he got every day. It was cafeteria food.

“That’s boring, why don’t you ask for something different?” the beaten boy asked curiously, innocence riddled throughout his voice. He was always innocent. Why did he always seem innocent?  
  
“ _Josh_.” he said, giving the other a “what-the-actual-fuck” look. “Do you think I could actually do that?”

The other retreated into his seat as his gaze moved down to the cuts on his thighs. Tyler turned quickly back to eating the food given to him, however he couldn’t stop looking over at Josh out of the corner of his eye. He seemed to be very defeated, and almost sad.

 

But why did he care?

 

If he wanted to care, he should have cared on that night six months ago.

Sitting back in his chair, Tyler gave a look over at the boy who’s colored locks drooped into his eyesight. He observed him closely, almost assessing the job he had done earlier. Six stabs to the stomach, five to the thighs, a bloodied nose and lacerations to the forehead. Perfectly what the autopsy had said.

 

_“Suspect received three-inch laceration on wrist as a result of retaliation.”_

 

The scar was still there. He hadn’t planned to accidentally slice open his wrist while stabbing the other, but then again - what had he planned that night? Josh was staring at the scar on his wrist, too. The deafening silence that filled the air was cut by his words.

“I’m sorry you got hurt.” he said, his dark eyes meeting Tyler’s. He hated how intense his eyes were.

“You’re sorry?” Tyler returned quietly. “ _You’re sorry?_ Josh, I did the worst possible thing anyone could ever do to a person. You should not be the one apologizing.” The other’s face was closer than ever to his. “I deserved it, Tyler. I deserved all of it.” He simply shook his head. How could he possibly think that he deserved it? Josh was always selfless, but this was just too far. But, before he could say anything, Josh gave him a small kiss on the lips. Small, but impactful. He hadn’t felt his lips in a long time.

 

He could taste the blood in his mouth.


End file.
